WAKE FOREST, N.C. — A man in Raleigh is proving it's never too late to start something new. Instead of sitting on the beach, he dives into the water.
Dan Blum started his new diving hobby when he was 60 years old on a trip to Mexico with his daughter.
“I'm 78 now, so I've been diving for 18 years,” Blum said. “This will be my 313th dive.”
“I'm not going to sit on the beach and watch you have fun and sit there and drink drinks with umbrellas in them,” Blum said.
Since then, he’s completed hundreds of dives. It takes a lot of preparation.
“This is a complex thing to do that has to be done right,” Blum said. “And I don't leave any of it to guessing.”
As a retired engineer, new gadgets and organization are some of his strong suits. And it’s become a bonding experience for Blum and his daughter.
“It's a lot of fun to be able to have an activity like this with my dad,” Sheila Blum said. “He talks about how the roles are a little bit reversed when we dive. I'm the role of the parent, and he's the role of the child just because I have more experience than he does.”
Most of his dives happen right here in North Carolina at Fantasy Lake.
“Of my 300 dives I mentioned, I probably have 200 of them here,” Dan Blum said. “So, I can give people a tour of the place.”
Dan Blum says getting ready takes a lot of energy, but once he’s in the water it’s the most relaxing thing in the world. Even though he’s been there hundreds of times, he never tires of the adventure.
“Sometime [I’ll] have to give it up,” Dan Blum said. “So I don't know when I'll give it up, but it probably is not as far in the future as when I started.”
Underwater is one of his favorite places to be, and he’s not planning on quitting any time soon. Dan Blum and his daughter are part of the Down Under Diver’s Club in Raleigh. He’s also part of a senior diving group called the Scuba Nuts.